This thesis speaks of modern graphic design. It is written from a personal perspective on the field, and on how I think it is understood. I feel like graphic design has become to be understood as purely utilitarian. A decorative function of communication. With this text, I follow an intuition that misunderstandings of what graphic design is come from the ways it is practised, on computers, with computers and for a computer based existence. I believe misunderstandings exists inside and outside the field, but this thesis will concentrate on my perceptions as a designer from within.

This thesis deals with modern graphic design. It is written from a personal perspective on the field, and how I think it is understood. I feel like graphic design has become understood as purely utilitarian. A decorative function of communication. With the text, I follow an intuition the misunderstanding comes from the ways it is practiced, on computers, with computers and for a computer based distribution. I believe this misunderstanding exists inside and outside the field, but this thesis will concentrate on my perceptions as a designer from within.

Researching this feeling requires the investigation of three main points; firstly, the notion of craft. How can craft be defined, and how has it's understanding changed with the the adoption of general purpose computers as tools. Secondly, a dive into the existing confusion between efficiency and efficacy in software tools. Efficiency being an avoidance of waste, efficacy being the ability to produce a desired effect. The interchangeability of these two notions lead me to understand the nature of some software tools, how they interface with me, and how that interfacing effects the use and understanding of the tool. Lastly, the learning curve of alternative interfaces is considered, what the payoff of a more invested relation to software tools may be, and what I believe is at stake when interfaces try to disappear.

Researching this intuition requires the investigation of three main points; firstly, the notion of craft. How can craft be defined, and how has it's understanding changed with the with the adoption of general purpose computers as tools. Secondly, a dive into the confusion between efficiency and efficacy in software tools. Efficiency being an avoidance of waste, efficacy being the ability to produce a desired effect. The interchangeability of these two notions lead me to understand the nature of some software tools, how they interface with me as a user, and how that interfacing effects the use and understanding of the tool. Lastly, the learning curve of alternative interfaces is considered, what the payoff of a more invested relation to software tools may be, and what I believe is at stake when interfaces try to dissapear.

I'm developing the opinion that for graphic design not to be seen as a simple utility, designer themselves must change their relations to their practice and their tools, so the secondary thematic of this text is interfacing —as an active verb. I refuse to accept the constructs that show the digital world as totalities, I believe I must see them as wrappers and conventions that masquerade as solutions to problems. Interfaces are a type of dialog. While developing this text, the realisation that the dialog was not neutral became clearer and clearer. With the setting of graphic design, I'll consider what it means to be an end-user.

The secondary thematic of this text is interfacing —as an active verb. I refuse to accept the constructs that make up the digital world as totalities, I rather see them as wrappers and conventions that masquerade as do-all solutions. I think the field of graphic design needs to adapt to being practiced on computers. Too often my tools try to mimick the physical traditions instead of harnessing the potential that computation can bring to graphic design. The industry must go beyond the digitally illeterate positions that industry standard software keeps it's users in. By this I mean that the access to digital litteracy is shared between softare makers and software users, but as a user I think I have much more to lose than software makers do.

"The computer world deals with imaginary, arbitrary made up stuff that was all made up by somebody. Everything you see was designed and put there by someone. [...] There are so many ideas to care about, and with ideas comes the politics of ideas." (Ted Nelson, 2012)

With this dissertation I attempt to understand the factors made and that make software plainly utilitarian. The economic dimensions always seem omnipresent as an uphill battle, but I'm too exited about the potentials of computers and software to give up on the fight for “cultural software” (Lev Manovich, 2011). Moreover I'm motivated by movements that question the political and social elements that are translated into the technical domain. "The computer world deals with imaginary, arbitrary made up stuff that was all made up by somebody. Everything you see was designed and put there by someone. [...] There are so many ideas to care about, and with ideas comes the politics of ideas." (Nelson, 2012)

The questions that drove this thesis have been addressed from my personal experience. I feel very strongly about my field becoming functional utility because I believe in the power of a visually shaped message. It confuses me that the majority of the graphic design I observe in the public, executed by professional shape givers, is not more interested in it's position in relation to the politics of the tools it is created out of. During my training in art school, I used to get frustrated with my peers and I coming to similar visual resolutions to the assignments we had. It became clear after a few of these occurrences that, while we might have had different interests and background cultures, we were receiving the same assignment, from the same teachers, out of the same workshops; and we responded to these assignments with influences from the same lectures, the same blogs, same magazines; then we resolved them with the same tools (and similar methods in said tools, as we had been thought these tools together) on the same computers. Finally we all went to the same print shop and did our final cuts and bindings in the same ‘technical’ room, before assessments. I'm explaining this frustration because I think a lot of what was happening during graphic design school is happening in today's professional design world too. Trends will be trends and influences weigh differently from place to place, but my reoccurring feeling is that a lot of the bits of graphic design I see nowadays tastes the same as the next. It feels similar. It's not unthinkable that these designers would have had similar influences, or followed similar trends, but the taste and the feel I'm talking about comes from composition and from shapeliness. It's like all this design was made on the same grid, or had to abide to the same template. It's like all the production had to conform to the same guidelines, bordering on the line of subliminal. My cynical belief is that this is true, because it is an almost sure bet that these designers have worked within similar environments, within similar influences, with similar design tools, on very similar computers. The consequence of all design looking the same is that it all gets read the same way. Serving the same pictorial facture over and over means that the audience views in comparison, not in difference. This shortcuts to a view of graphic design that is a regularised transaction.

I hope to have addressed indirectly the situation of computer illiteracy and made a stance for what we users should be demanding. I am simply weary of interface constructs that seem to make the learning of the behind the scenes elements harder because they have no reason, and therefor make me think that there may be a hidden agenda in these practices. This suspicion is probably more often false than true, but is a growing concern stemming from “the Agile Turn”(Gürses and van Hoboken, 2016). Confirming this statement is not an area I want to research, for fear of what I might find, but the example of ways in which lack of functional computer knowledge is leveraged for a solutionist financial gain occur very often online and across digital services. They offer something for free, but get a lot more out of the data that is harvested from their user base. These are reasons why I advocate for wider spread knowledge of the functioning of information systems. Meanwhile, in and for all of this the *learning* aspects are key, and it is with the ideas of learning and spreading knowledge that I stay motivated.

To state this opinion clearly: I am not holding the position that every human must learn computer architectures and programming languages. What I am calling for are interfacing methods that do not aim for seamlessness, that reveal their parts, toggling between heterogeneous and homogeneous displays, and that trust their users as equally smart as the software builders. I do not believe that everybody must be on similar technical levels of understanding computer technologies either, but I do think that a broader and better understanding of all of the types and all of the layers of abstractions that are needed for computers and networks to function is, in my opinion, a valiant way forwards.

I think the similar compositions and similar shapes come from the defaults and presets the used tools have. Somehow the mould and the cast are identicals, and that ends up being just OK. I'm quite confused and disenchanted by this state of affairs, but I do believe that interesting graphic design can be restored. It can be rebuilt by looking at what it involves to make graphic design today. The re-identification as crafts-people as opposed to sequencers is the first point. Understanding how craft has changed, how tools have changed it, and what it means to practice with abstracting / abstracted tools and understanding the politics that surround these tools is a second point. Seeing that ‘industry interests’ are not to be taken for granted, and that efficiency and speed actually have costs. The costs constitute the third and broadest point of this thesis, about learning curves and their payoffs.

In short, I am not holding the position that every human must learn computer architectures and programming languages. What I am saying is that interfacing methods should be helpful, reveal their parts, toggle between heterogeneous and homogeneous displays, and that trust their users as equally smart as the software builders. I do not believe that everybody must be on similar technical levels of understanding computer technologies either, but I do think that a broader and better understanding of the types and the layers of abstractions that are needed for computers to function is increasingly important. I also believe that the need for a certain digital literacy extends beyond professional practitioners. The powers of information technologies, information systems are all around us and the examples that show us how their use and existence embodies specific politics, become forms of governance, arise daily.

I would like to thank Marloes de Valk, Aymeric Mansoux and Steve Rushton for their writing support. The body of tutors at the Piet Zwart Institute, Master in Media Design and Communications for feedback and project development. Open Source Publishing for their energy, welcome and flexibility. Finally, my family and parents for their enablement, encouragements and support.